


Keep Beach City out of SHIELD jurisdiction

by chinashopbull



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Fake Science, Gen, Incomplete, Jossed, Vacation, work no longer in progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinashopbull/pseuds/chinashopbull
Summary: Spider-Man’s off his game due to burnout, so the Avengers force him to take an LOA — away from NYC, lest he be tempted to soldier on and get himself, or someone else, killed. Peter and his work ethic are both really, really unhappy about it. Luckily, someone in the know recommended him a particular midatlantic tourist town called, unoriginally enough, Beach City.He’s not bored for long.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this while waiting for Steven Universe season 2 to drop. (For reference, that’s after Peridot’s been introduced but before she joins the team.) Takes place early-to-mid season 1. 
> 
> **Work is incomplete and will not be continued.** Notes for the unwritten remainder are posted as chapter 2.

It was Clint’s idea to start with, and that right there should’ve tipped Peter off. Now the bus is disappearing up the hillside, and unless Peter wants to try _webbing_ his way back up the eastern seaboard to Manhattan (and forfeiting the other half of his round-trip ticket in the process), it’s too late for regrets.

He sighs as the last echoes of the diesel engine fade away, leaving him alone with the papery hiss of dune grass shifting uncomfortably under the neverending ocean wind. Peter shivers and puts his hood up. And tries to remember exactly how Clint convinced him that, if Peter _had_ to take an LOA regardless of his own wishes, hitting up a touristy seaside town _in early November_ was a totally awesome idea. 

Peter’d been slap-happy with blood loss and adrenaline die-off for that conversation, so he can’t remember Clint’s exact words. Only that the smirky jerkface recommended this town in particular, in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of way, without explaining why. Morbid curiosity got the best of Peter in the end. He was expecting Vegas.

It doesn’t look like anyplace special from here. Tranquil. Prosaic. Clean. …Boring as hell. 

This must be the punchline to Clint’s joke. Yeah, it’ll be hilarious, set Webhead up like he’s gonna end up in some seedy, soul-sucking horrorshow, get him all riled and stressed and excited about it, and then it turns out to be just some dull, chintzy little rinky-dink about a hundred miles south of Bumfuck, Nowhere. 

“Thanks a bunch, Hawkguy,” Peter says to absolutely no one. “I’ll bring you back a souvenir. Something that really represents the place. A big jar of _nothing.”_

Welp. He’s here now. Might as well commit to it. He walks down the empty off-ramp toward town, legs wobbly from the long bus ride.

“Welcome to Beach City,” reads the sun-bleached sign.

“Home of the most unoriginal town names in America,” Peter says back.

At first he thinks it only looks that small because it’s far away. 

At first.

There’s admittedly something kinda charming about it up close. Each surface is sunfaded and windworn, and somehow finds a comfortable balance between rugged and adorable. It’s like the super-domestic, East Coast version of a cowboy town. Only it’s got that Coney Island salty-french-fry smell instead of… whatever cowboy towns smell like. Horses and horse poop, probably. Peter shrugs to himself. Maybe next time the Avengers manhandle him into taking a vacation he’ll try to bargain for an all-expense-paid horseback adventure tour. Those probably exist. At least learning to ride a horse would give him something to do.

The streets are dead and sand-dusted. There oughta be a tumbleweed somewhere.

To be fair, it is ass o’clock on a Sunday morning, and it isn’t New York. 

Common sense says his first stop should be a hotel to dump off his bag, but he forgot to bring a snack for the ride so his stomach’s making him extra cranky, and anyway, he sees the Big Donut before he sees any hotels. Donut places open early, right?

The lights are on but the sign is still flipped to “Sorry, we’re”. He checks the listed business hours against his watch. Then, pointedly, pulls on the door, and taps knuckles against glass when it stays locked. The girl arranging pastries in the display case looks up blankly, glances first at Peter then at the clock on the wall. She sets down her tissue paper and comes to the door, absently brushing her hands off on her pants.

“Sorry,” she says as she holds the door open for him. Her smile has a kicked-puppy quality. “We almost never get any customers before six. Orrr out-of-towners at this time of year. Kinda too cold to swim, y’know?” 

“I’m not much of a swimmer anyway,” Peter says, following her back to the counter.

She gives him a tiny, one-note laugh. “What can I get for you?”

He scans the display case. “Two chocolate-glazed and one of the rainbow sprinkles. And — coffee?”

She answers with a knowing smile and plops a waxed paper cup onto the counter. “Over in that corner.”

“Thanks.”

“Sooo…” she says as she shakes open a paper bag and Peter pumps the big button on the carafe. “What brings you to Beach City so late in the year? Just passing through?”

“Mmm… more like an unplanned vacation.”

Her brow furrows. “Unplanned? How so?”

Peter pauses with his hand on the sugar cannister and tilts his head at her. Okay, she’s just curious and making conversation, but — jeez, nosy much? Is this a small-town thing? 

On the other hand — hey, small town. It’s not like anyone here will ever talk to anyone back home. Maybe he can do that thing he’s heard that some people do on vacations, where they pretend to be someone else? Just make up stories about the life they’re supposedly taking a break from? He could say he raises horses…

Nah, Peter vetoes that whole idea straight up. He has enough fake identities. No, he’s super sleep-deprived and more in the mood for something along the lines of radical honesty.

“I guess I’ve been kinda overloaded at work lately,” he says. “At least according to my, ah, colleagues. They’re sorta forcing me to take time off. One of them recommended this place, and I didn’t have any other ideas of where to go, so. Here I am.”

The girl puzzles. “Really? Man, if I got _ordered_ to take a vacation there’s like a _hundred_ places I’d wanna go.”

Peter seals the lid over his cup, slowly. “I don’t really think about it much,” he says. Point of fact: he thinks about it so rarely that it’s never occurred to him before _right now_ how odd this probably is.

“No?”

“I love my work,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t like to take time off.”

“What do you do?”

“It’s sort of a — it’s a nonprofit. Helping crime victims. Disaster relief. That kind of thing.” Which is true enough.

“Aw, that sounds amazing. No wonder you don’t wanna leave.”

Peter snorts. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all sunshine and sprinkles.”

_“A job’s a job,”_ she says. “Is that what you’re gonna say?”

“Not really.”

Her ears turn pink. “Oh.”

“Though I mean — well, it is,” says Peter. “Just. Y’know. I mean, at pretty much every job you end up underpaid and underappreciated no matter how much you bust your ass. And everyone treats you like you’re invisible right up until the moment you screw up, and then suddenly you’re the center of attention. So there’s that, sure.”

“Sure.”

“Just, mine is… kind of intense. It’s dangerous sometimes. A lot of times. Most of the time. Mistakes have really bad consequences — and I mean _really_ bad — so the pressure’s high. And we can’t help everyone, every time, and there’s just… there’s no way around that. Which can kinda get to you after a while, which I guess is why I’m here in the first place. And the pay is… heheh, I guess let’s just say it doesn’t keep the lights on, so I have to work a second job on top of it. And don’t get me _started_ on how verbally abusive my boss _there_ is. And the messed up part is _that’s_ the job I keep solely for the money even though they basically pay me in nickels and war bonds and I kinda don’t remember the last time I got more than four hours of sleep and.” 

The girl’s not even blinking.

Peter closes his mouth, drops his hand from the back of his neck, blinks down at his coffee. Reel it in, Parker. Maybe radical honesty is only for people with the capacity to shut up at will. 

He takes a long, scalding glug from the cup, burning the crap out of his tongue. Serves you right, stupid tongue, for dumping on this poor girl who’s just trying to do _her_ job. She doesn’t wanna hear about all that. If she did, she’d be dishing out cocktails, not pastries.

She’s putting a fourth donut into the bag.

“Oh,” says Peter, pointing, “I didn’t—“

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, and waves him off.

“You don’t have to—“

“I said don’t worry about it.” And she levels a Look at him that, one day, if she keeps practicing it, just might be able to go toe-to-toe with Aunt May’s you-are-taking-home-all-these-leftovers-young-man-and-that-is-final Look.

He curves his fingers flush against the takeout cup. The warmth makes his hands prickle. “Thanks,” he says.

“Your life sounds pretty hectic, I’ll give you that. Still,” she adds, rubbing her forearm. “Better too much than not enough. It sounds like you’re doing something important. Helping people and everything? The only thing I help people with is getting their sugar fix.”

“And caffeine,” Peter says, raising the cup in toast. “Definitely a public service. I probably wouldn’t be standing right now without your help in that.”

She doesn’t look convinced, and rings him up in silence.

Peter’s stomach twists a little. Saying the wrong thing: just one more valuable service he provides. “Hey,” he says.

“Hm?”

He holds out a hand. “I’m Peter.”

For a moment she searches his face, then gives up and shakes his hand. That kicked-puppy smile returns. “Hi, Peter. I’m Sadie.”

Sounds like a good name for a golden retriever. Which — she kinda looks like. But not in a bad way! Damn, Peter’s glad he finally got that little filter installed between his brain and his mouth, even if it does go on the fritz all the time, up to and including thirty seconds ago. New subject. Something practical. Something useful. “Can I ask you where the cheapest hotel is around here? I don’t have a place to stay yet.” Aw yeah, practicality for the win!

“Mm… Probably the _cheapest_ would be the Motel 3 on Ashford Street,” Sadie says. “Buuut if you’d rather avoid the bedbugs, you might wanna try the Breakwater Inn at the far end of the boardwalk. I don’t really know what the prices are like, but all the locally owned places are gonna be way cheaper than usual this time of year. One of my friends works at the Breakwater so I know they keep it clean.”

“Awesome,” says Peter. “Thanks a ton, Sadie.” 

“Welcome to Beach City,” she says before the door closes behind him.

“What the hell,” mutters Peter, blowing across the lid of the cup as if that’s gonna do anything to cool down the coffee sealed inside. “What even,” he adds for good measure. “Kid works in a donut shop. She’s not a freaking _therapist.”_

Maybe he should get one of those. A freaking therapist. For freaks and their freakishly not-freakish mental freakouts. With a Ph.D. in freaky-deaky, wibbly-wobbly, supery-powery stress and general angst. There are at least two superhero lawyers in New York (that he knows of); why not superhero shrinks? God knows they could pretty much all use one. 

And then maybe Spider-Man could be at home right now, fighting the good fight and all that, instead of freezing his balls off on an empty boardwalk next to an emptier beach just because he screwed up _one time,_ just because he was exhausted, just because of long-term sleep deprivation, just because his mind’s been traveling at warp factor nine for at least months just because there’s no one he can sit down and _tell things to_ just because secret identities are a thing just because he’d strongly prefer to keep Aunt May alive, thank you very much.

Superhero shrinks. Many problems, one solution. Hello, Geniuses? Yeah, it’s Spider-Man. Just wanted to let you know I’m joining you now. No, no, don’t send a fruit basket, I won’t even eat it.

He sighs and tilts his head back, closes his eyes. The wind really doesn’t ever stop here. At least it smells okay, salt and french fries and that swampy ocean-smell. Small favors.

The sun’s fully up now, but the clouds won’t let it do its job. The shoreline is painted in long sheets of silver, everything bleak as hell, like the background graphics in a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter. Only less zombies. It’s eerie, and it’s also eerie how perfectly it matches his mood right now. 

It’d make for some killer landscape photos.

Hotel can wait. It’s not like his bag is much of a burden on his super-strength, and he won’t need a bed for at least another 15 hours. Fishing one of the chocolate-covered donuts from the paper sack, he starts eating as he hops off the edge of the boardwalk and makes tracks down the shoreline, mentally framing up shots as he goes and hoping for a good one.

Between the simple happiness of donuts in his belly, caffeine-jitters in his hands, and wearing down the first set of batteries in his D-SLR, Peter starts to feel good enough to forget about stupid things like the sand in his Chucks and the passage of time. 

The cliff face that started out distant is looming up on him now, and presents a really interesting focal point to accentuate the emptiness of the beach, the sky, the water. He’s shooting in full-color mode but the surroundings provide their own desaturation. Ansel Adams, eat your heart out.

By the time the low-battery indicator starts blinking, the hour is less ungodly and Peter’s in something resembling a good mood. And ohhh man he suddenly has to pee, like, a week ago. (Coffee: such a fickle mistress.)

He’s right next to the foot of the cliff now. Glancing hastily to make sure no one’s watching — duh-doy, Parker, the beach is totally deserted — he plants his feet in front of the rock face and unzips.

And of course — of _course_ — that’s when his Spidey-sense decides to sound the alarm, all hands on deck, this is not a drill.

Mid-stream, too.

He spins and crouches and puts his back up against the rock on pure blistering instinct — and, wait a minute, ew, there’s pee all over this rock. And now his back is wet. And he _likes_ this shirt. 

Better and better all the time.

Two muffled explosions in quick succession, then women’s voices shouting. 

The first voice is just a hoarse war-whoop, maybe an “Awww yeah!”

The second, a London accent: “Amethyst! Focus!”

A third somewhere in there, not shouting so much as muttering loudly to herself, sounding eerily like Peter’s inner monologue when he’s mathing out a battlefield and trying to find the perfect angle for attack.

He leaves his bag in the sand, camera balanced carefully on top, and creeps around the corner until he can see…

…uh, a giant, six-legged, rock… virus… robot thing? Sure, why not.

Some kinda projectile is tearing through the sand toward it, kicking up dust and seashell particles. It looks very much like Sonic the Hedgehog’s gay lavender cousin or something. It collides with the robot and they both topple in opposite directions. 

As Purple Sonic is thrown clear, it unballs itself to reveal a short little woman who’s 80% hair and 20% grumbles. “You think you’re so tough?” she yells at the robot. And then she pulls a fucking _whip_ out of her _fucking chest_ and how does that even _work_ and she rushes out of sight again. _“Come to mama!”_

Peter climbs about twenty feet up the rock face to what he hopes is a safer vantage, and edges around the corner to scope out the sitch. He’s itching to jump in, but Spidey-sense is being frustratingly nonspecific and he can’t tell who’s the bad guy here. Past experience suggests the robot’s probably evil, but the women might be, too. They’re obviously not human, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything — and maybe it’s just him being so far out of his own New York element that’s making him cautious, but… 

His hand’s fumbling through his pockets for his mask when he remembers that he was an idiot and packed it in the very bottom of his bag. He twists, but hesitates before webbing the bag up to him — his camera’s sitting on top, exposed, and the lens cap is still off and if it hits the sand —

Something hits _him_ instead.

A spike of adrenaline slows time down as he falls, slow enough for him to see the spur of rock he was just perched on shatter under the impact of the giant insect-virus-robot, but not slow enough for him to decide whether the robot hit the cliff on purpose, and he needs to decide _now_ whether to web himself to safety or land spine-first on the rocks that are still below him.

The web strand sticks to the first stable surface in Peter’s field of vision. Plain instinct. And now he’s swinging wide around the cliff as the robot rights itself, and now he’s landing on the sand as the robot turns to face the women again — and — 

Ah, yes. Directly in the crossfire. Exactly where he wants to be without his mask.

“Wha — who are you? Garnet, who is _that?_ What’s he doing here? I told you we should’ve put the fence back up!”

“I think he’s human.”

“I’ve never seen a human do anything like _that._ Do you think he might be an android of some kind?”

“My name’s Peter,” he calls over his shoulder, “and last time I checked I was human. Someone wanna explain to me what’s going on here?”

“You shouldn’t _be_ here! Garnet, we have to get him _out_ of here!”

“I think it’s too—“

The robot recovers its footing and makes a war cry that sounds like the actual devil dragging his fingernails down Galactus’ chalkboard. Everyone present slams their palms against their ears, and before they’ve recovered the robot charges.

Peter dives out of its immediate path, webbing its legs as he tumbles. It trips a bit, slows down, rips some of the tethers and tries to keep going, but the Purple Sonic woman has that (disconcertingly organic) whip-thing out again and is cracking it at what might be the robot’s head. “Good!” she shouts above the clang and clash. “There was too much talking goin’ on anyway!”

What she lacks in finesse she makes up for with the kind of aggression that’d make Logan smirk. Between Purple Sonic’s viciousness, and one _serious_ Falcon Punch from the London woman with amazing hair, the robot doesn’t stand a…

Holy shit it just poofed.

Just… 

_“Poofed,”_ he says. 

He looks around. 

He looks at the round-faced kid running up the beach toward the women. 

He looks at the empty air where the robot just _poofed._

“What the shit is this? Am I in a video game? I’m in a video game, aren’t I. Robots don’t just _poof_ in real life. Did money come out of it? (Can I have some?)”

London Hair straightens up (goddamn, that woman has _incredible_ posture) and holds up a sparkly blue gem that’s so absurdly huge and perfectly cut it _has_ to be fake. “Not exactly,” she tells Peter, before forming some kind of magic force-field bubble around the gem and, apparently, handwaving it into literal oblivion.

His head suddenly hurts so much worse now.

“That was amaaazing! Oh my gosh you guys!” The kid spins, both hands in the air. It’s November and he’s still wearing flip-flops. Someone’s an irresponsible parent.

Wait, where’d the _kid_ come from? Peter palms the side of his head. Yep, there’s a little bit of blood on his hand when he pulls it away. Must’ve gotten glanced by one of the falling rocks. Definitely at least a little concussed. Obviously at least a little hallucinating.

“And you!” The kid scrambles over. “Are you okay?”

Peter screws his eyes shut and juts a thumbs-up into the air. “I’m okay. Totally okay. I’m the senator of Okaylahoma.”

“You don’t look okay,” says the slender, unsettlingly pale woman who hasn’t earned a nickname yet. She’s leaning over him and studying him, not so much with concern as with _such_ detached scientific curiosity, Peter is forced to reconsider, for the first time ever, the actual desirability of his lifelong fantasy of meeting Mr. Spock in the flesh. Turns out it’s actually quite off-putting to be looked at with one raised eyebrow and an unspoken _Fascinating_ lingering in the air.

“Trust me, I’ve had worse,” says Peter.

“Good. That means you can leave now.”

_“Pearl!”_

“What? It’s not like he’s supposed to be here.”

“Pearrrl,” says the kid. “He helped us. We have to help him.”

Pearl straightens and folds her arms, the imperious stance undermined by the sudden uncertainty on her face. “Does he _need_ help?” she asks.

“Wellll we could at least get him a band-aid?” says the kid. “He’s kinda bleeding.”

* * *

“C’mon, guys,” says Steven. “He’s obviously Spider-Man.”

Pearl flinches away. Actually _flinches._ “What is a _spider_ man,” she asks, horrified, “and am I ever going to have to catch it with a drinking glass and a magazine and put it outside?”

“Not _a_ spider man,” says Steven. “Just… Spider-Man.” As the baffled silence stretches out, he and Peter exchange a glance. Peter shrugs at him, and Steven sighs, wearily. “Don’t you guys ever watch TV?” he asks.

“Duh,” says Amethyst, casually stretching a shoulder. “World wrestling on Pay-Per-View.”

“That cable bill was _you?”_ says Pearl.

“No no,” says Steven. “I mean like the news.”

Garnet manages a feat of the impossible and looks even _more_ unimpressed than she already did.

“Why would we watch _that?”_ says Amethyst. “Why would _you?”_

Steven closes his eyes and holds up one hand. “Normally, I would agree with you,” says Steven. “But sometimes there are superheroes on the news. That’s how I heard about Spider-Man. Connie told me the rest. Her family lived in New York one summer. He’s totally great! He saves people all the time there.”

“New York?” Pearl looks… lost, to put it charitably.

This, Peter suspects, goes a _bit_ beyond typical small-town shelteredness.

Abruptly, Amethyst decides she’s had enough of this conversation and spins on her heel, wandering toward the beach house and still stretching every muscle in her arms like it’s her hobby. “How ‘bout some luuunch?” she calls over her shoulder.

Before Peter can figure out the proper social etiquette for extricating oneself from the company of probably-extraterrestrial shut-ins and their (apparently) adopted human offspring, said offspring is offering Peter a magnanimous hand and a completely genuine smile that even Peter finds charming, and Peter is _so_ not the type to be charmed by children.

“May I offer you a sandwich, weary traveler?” says Steven, widening his grin, and — ah hell, Peter’s not just charmed, he’s practically melting. 

He looks up at the other adults, looks for a frown or subtle shake of the head that’ll cue him to invent some prior engagement and decline Steven’s invite as politely as possible. Instead, he sees Garnet consider him for a brief but intense moment, then smile. 

“We’ve got bologna,” she says, in the same tone one might normally use to tempt someone with ice cream or a free iPad.

Peter starts brushing sand off his camera as he follows the Gems toward the house, Steven bouncing beside him and describing (with grand hand gestures) a teleporting pet lion whose mane somehow contains what sounds like a pocket dimension. Peter nods along and throws in a “that’s awesome” every now and then. Anything important will make sense later. That’s just how these things go. 

Up ahead of him, he can hear Pearl muttering, “Why do they always have to follow him home?”

And Peter wonders who “they” are.

* * *

After Clint recommended the place, Peter, being a good little millennial, of course googled Beach City first thing. 

Aside from a spartan Wikipedia entry, a few residents’ Facebook profiles, and a local-government site full of broken links and broken images that appears not to have been updated since 2001, the only thing he could find was a conspiracy-theory blog which, while active — _frantically_ so — contains zero internal logic and seems to be maintained by a teenager who keeps forgetting to turn off the capslock. 

Peter read six months’ worth of archives during his lunch break, snickering until pity took over. This poor kid — Ronaldo, says the About Me — may be as geeky as Peter was at that age, but at least Peter had some basic critical-thinking skills to compensate. This Ronaldo kid’s got… well, okay, at least he’s got imagination. Might have a future in writing B-grade sci-fi, _if_ he can cultivate a healthy sense of disbelief. (You can’t voluntarily suspend your disbelief unless you have some to begin with. Otherwise it’s just psychosis.)  
  
Otherwise, Peter’s forecast for Ronaldo consists mainly of McJobs and rigorous medication.

* * *

  
One evening Peter finds himself sitting on a log along the beach, scuffing his feet at the cold grey remains of someone’s bonfire and scratching in the pocket-sized notebook he picked up at the drug store this afternoon. 

He ends up with a list of ideas for projects he could do while he’s here. Has to draw a line through most of them, because child endangerment is a thing. And because Tony isn’t likely to FedEx down a _particle accelerator_ just because Peter’s getting restless. (Or, okay, he most likely _would,_ but not without asking questions.)

Because at the end of the day, as interesting and kooky as the Gems and Steven sound on paper, actually hanging out with them can be just as boring as hanging out with anyone else, if you do it for too long. Pleasant, yeah, absolutely, he likes them a lot, yadda yadda, but… boring.

Maybe it’s because all this Gem stuff is just as normal to them as spider powers are to Peter. More so! They were all born Gems — or, half-Gems, as the case may be. Peter was nothing but a hassled nerd with bad luck until he was fifteen. (Okay, well, he _did_ have a latent power for snark and general mouthiness. That one’s congenital. But he still didn’t really _know_ about that power, or get to flex it, until after the bite.)

The Gems have let him tag along on two missions so far, but for some reason the action never seems to last longer than ten minutes or so, and Pearl’s strictly forbidden him from touching pretty much anything (much less collecting samples) in any of the weirdo places the warp pads lead to. 

And of course he can’t really get his vigilante on around here, since the biggest crimes happening in Beach City are the occasional bike theft and the megaphone on the mayor’s van.

Peter sighs. There’s just no _wonder_ in the world anymore.

He finishes crossing off everything on the list that’s too expensive, or would take too long, or would require calling up Tony or Bruce to borrow equipment weird enough to pique their interest and maybe bring them sniffing around. Which leaves…

• fuck with Ronaldo’s head  
• rig mayor’s van to play “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and/or “Enter Sandman”  
• map Steven’s genome

In the interest of remaining in the “good guy” category, Peter’s leaning toward the third one. (Though he’s sure he can carve out some room in his blistering schedule for at least one of the other two.) 

If he has any kind of success figuring out Steven’s DNA, it could end up being helpful for both Steven and the people floundering around trying to figure out how to raise him. Plus, Peter can get the necessary equipment and software from Betty Ross, who has no SHIELD affiliation, knows when to stop prying, and is probably already taking a pile of secrets to her grave. It doesn’t hurt that she also has a public email address that Peter can use (from a library computer and his own junk-Gmail account) without attracting notice. The Avengers never need to know.

Hm. Peter should probably get Steven’s permission before he goes firing off that email. Or — Steven’s parents’. Guardians’. Whatever.

The Gems are off world at the moment, and Steven himself is over at Connie’s.

The car wash is easy enough to find, though.

“Greg… Universe.” Peter scratches the back of his neck. “Okay, I know a guy legitimately named _Steven Strange_ and even I think that name sounds fake.”

The man in the ugly sweater leans back in his lawn chair and shrugs. “It’s real now, baby. Remember that dude in the ‘90s who changed his name to Dot-Com Guy? Remember _Prince?”_

“Uh… I know who Prince _is_ but that’s maybe, uh…”

“Little before your time, huh?”

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool.” Greg shrugs. “I guess I should know better. I mean, I usually hang out with my kid and a bunch of immortal shut-ins. I’m used to my references flying right past everyone.”

“Hey, me too!” Peter blurts. “It’s frustrating, y’know? You work so hard to keep things light and interesting and culturally relevant and all you get back is blank stares and brush-offs. An eye-roll at best.” (Though to be fair, Clint gets a lot of Peter’s jokes, and Tony gets more than he lets on or admits are funny, and Deadpool can not only keep up but run circles around him. But everyone else besides them.)

Greg grins and strums a single chord, sorta like punctuation. That guitar has seen better days. “Hope springs eternal, though, right?” he says.

“More like ‘old habits die hard,’ but I like the sound of yours better.”

Greg laughs and fiddles with his tuning pegs. “So what can I do ya for, Peter?”

Since there’s nowhere else, Peter sits down on the chilly concrete next to Greg’s lawn chair. “I don’t know how much the Gems or Steven told you…”

“They told me you’re Spider-Man, if that’s what you’re worried about,” says Greg. “But as you might’ve guessed, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“No — I mean, well, yes,” says Peter, looking hastily around at the deserted streets. “But I also have a pretty strong background in biochem and I was wondering… well, I’d like to map Steven’s genome.”

One of the guitar strings snaps with a wibbly twang. The musical version of a spit-take? “You wanna _what_ now?”

Shit. “Well I mean. Not entirely. Not really at all, actually, so, yeah, poor choice of words there. I’m not a geneticist so I wouldn’t be able to really lay it out, but like, I could map his chromosomes at least, do some DNA matching against you and the Gems, try and sort out what’s what in terms of human or Gem traits?”

Greg’s mouth is still open, but nothing’s coming out of it. Not even air.

So Peter, getting nervous now, falls back on default behaviors: he keeps talking. “I mean, okay, we know he’s half human and half Gem, but from what I understand, nobody really knows what that _means._ Like, literally everyone was caught off guard when it turned out he has healing abilities, or that he can fuse — much less with regular _humans_ who don’t have _any_ Gem DNA. I mean, what other surprises are there? Nobody knows what his aging process will be like, what kinds of diseases he might be susceptible to, what other powers he might have. 

“And I’m not saying that this’ll provide answers to all that. Even if I could chart every last protein, we still wouldn’t know for sure how to interpret that. But maybe it could give you some clues? Provide a basis for making _educated_ guesses? I just think it might help. 

“Besides, I know what it’s like to stumble through mysterious superpowers without any maps or signposts. At the very least this way he might not be caught so off-guard when something new happens. Mitigate the risk. In case something new happens during a dangerous moment. Which, as far as I’ve heard, is kinda the unfortunate norm.”

It still takes Greg a minute or so to say anything. When he does, his breath steams the air. “Yyyou… you can _do_ that?”

Peter shrugs. “I can try. Steven’s a minor, though. I’ll need your permission. And… maybe the Gems’ too? I dunno, I’m still not really clear on what the guardianship situation is.”

Greg looks pretty small already, but manages to shrink up even more. “Do you need, I dunno, his blood or like… _tissue samples?”_

“Chill. Hair is fine.”

Another puff of breath on the air, and Greg nods solemnly, white-knuckling his fretboard. Peter has never seen anyone put so much _feeling_ into a simple nod.

“I guess we should get you to sign a release, too,” says Peter. When Greg looks startled again, Peter adds, “Just to be thorough. So I officially have permission to know Steven’s medical info. There’s no reason to expect any danger. It’s mostly just microscope slides.”

“Okay, that makes sense. I guess. But — just so we’re eeextra clear here, he’s not… heheh… he’s not gonna end up on some kinda… super-secret government database here, is he?”

“Mr. Universe, believe me when I say that is the _last_ thing I want to come of this. I’m already doing everything I can to keep Beach City off their radar.”

_“‘Their’?”_

“I’ve even kept my phone off with the battery and motherboard out in case Tony gets bored enough to track my GPS. Do you know how hard it is to go this long without texting a single person?”

Greg scratches his head. “Must be a generational thing,” he mutters. “What’d you mean _‘their’?_ Who’s _they?”_

Peter knots his fingers together. “Uh. Just… y’know. Super-secret government people. Don’t worry, though. I’ve been dodging them as long as I’ve been Spider-Man. Not… not always successfully, and I was kinda forced into a formal relationship with them when I joined the Avengers. But they’re the good guys! (Basically.) They’re just… really, really nosy. And anyway, when I _have_ run into them by accident, they’ve always been more annoying than dangerous. (Usually.) Don’t worry about ‘em.”

“It sure sounds like I should worry.”

“Don’t. If you haven’t encountered them already, then they probably don’t know you guys exist, and if they don’t by now, it should be easy to keep it that way. Tedious as a philosophy students’ knitting circle, but easy. And if they already do know you exist — welp, there’s nothing you can do about it but take comfort in the fact that since they’ve ignored you so far, they’ll probably keep ignoring you.”

“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”

Peter leaves the conversation with a nasty kink in his intestines. He’s developed a pretty good instinct for spotting SHIELD agents, and not a single person’s pinged his radar since he got here. That doesn’t negate satellite surveillance or phone taps or super spy tech, of course, or even Ronaldo’s stupid blog, but…

Wait a sec.

How exactly did Clint know about Beach City in the first place?

For a minute Peter’s painfully tempted to put his phone back together and shoot out a quick text. Most counterproductive instinct ever.

Knowing Clint, though, and based on what he’s seen of Beach City so far, it seems like a 50/50 tossup between Hawkeye coming through town on SHIELD ops, and a much younger Clint Barton rolling in with the carnival during tourist season.

Peter holds his breath and hopes it was Carnie Clint.

But like he just told Greg: no sense worrying about it now.

He veers off toward the library, confident the Gems and Steven will give him a green light now that Greg’s on board. 


	2. [notes]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Condensed version of the notes I had for the rest of the story.

**Character stuff**

**Steven:** Instantly the little brother Peter never wanted but, now that he’s there, can’t resist loving and fretting over. The fretting-over-Steven in particular gives him something to bond over with the Gems. 

**Pearl:** Peter’s favorite because they come together over sciencey stuff. She keeps drifting off into some kinda trance when she looks at the genome map, but can’t or won’t say what’s bothering her.

**Garnet:** They train together a lot. They develop a low-key rivalry over which is better, Future Vision or Spidey Sense. 

**Amethyst:** freaks Peter out a little but provides banter practice in the absence of Tony/Clint/MJ/Wade/supervillains/etc. Later they discover ability to bond over certain fandoms; Greg is the one who catalyzes this discovery.

**Greg:** Peter gets a little too attached to him.

**Connie:** Peter adores her and starts a list of books to send her. This list is ongoing and he will continue to add to it and send her reading material for roughly the next ten years, after which she will Definitely have more income than him and start sending him books instead. He’ll also leverage every contact he has to help her education and career. She will never be in want. But for now she’s just his favorite kid he’s met ever.

**Sadie:** Reminds him of Gwen (deceased in this timeline) and that rips him up. Also does not endear Lars to him, like, at all.

**Lars:** Peter sees straight through to the massive curdling wad of insecurity and is Not Impressed. Ends up trying to help Lars anyway, because he’s Peter.

  
**Plot stuff**

  
SHIELD finds out what Peter’s doing, of course, and try to requisition Peter’s data/samples and like all the Gem tech while they’re at it. A tiny bit of fighting.

Garnet and Coulson end up in a staring match. (No, really.) Garnet wins. Greg produces a copy of the HIPPAA release he signed for Peter and hypothetically demands to know if Coulson has one too. Probably calls him some slightly out-of-date unflattering terms for a bad cop. Between these two bozos and the Steven-ness of Steven, Coulson is charmed into reassessing the threat level posed by the Gems as much lower. His formal rec to Fury/Hill is to treat the Gem temple as an autonomous allied nation-state and not to get directly involved without the Gems’ permission.

SHIELD also gets ahold of the history of the Gem-Earth war, Rose Quartz, all that. Pearl is super pleased to finally have access to allies, Amethyst is like “it’s about time the humans step up a little, it’s their freakin’ planet,” and Garnet pointedly withholds all commentary.

(IN THE END — Peter pulls Clint aside and is like “So about Beach City…” and Clint tries to pass himself off as innocent and all “I dunno what you could possibly be talking about.” Peter sincerely thanks him for the rec, and then Clint shows Peter a selfie of himself and Amethyst at the bowling alley and is like “The women there are incredible, amirite” and gives Peter an obnoxious wink. Peter steals his takeout coffee right out of his hands.)


End file.
